In Dreams
by Varia Lectio
Summary: After her murder, Nancy Thompson is sent into 'The Beautiful Dream.' She thinks she's found paradise-- but her battle is far from over. . .


_In Dreams_

Written by Varia Lectio.

Rating: R for strong adult language and brief violence.

Summary: After the events of _Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors_, Nancy is sent into the Beautiful Dream-- only to find that a familiar and unwelcome nemesis is hunting for her.

Disclaimer: I don't own _any_ of the characters from the _NOES_ films. Freddy, Nancy, and the like are the property of New Line Cinema and are the brainchildren of Wes Craven. Thanatos is based on a character from a discarded early draft of _Freddy vs. Jason,_ which was written by Peter Briggs.

Author's Notes: Big thanks goes to my three beta readers: Shadeshark, Ayezur, and Heart-Stricken. Also, thank-you to Thanos6 for pointing out a small yet important error in the original draft.

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"I'm going to dream you into a beautiful dream..."

Kristen's anguished voice echoed in Nancy's ears as her spirit was swept away, into some nameless corner of the endless Realm of Dreams.

What was her destination? Nancy wasn't sure, but she didn't have the power to stop what was happening to her.

Her soul rode the lightning-white conduit of Kristen's raw power, out from the blackness and filth of Krueger's lair; out into infinity. A thousand different worlds flashed by, each composed of pure imagination.

The stuff of dreams and nightmares. . .

Everything faded to white--

And Nancy opened her eyes.

The sun was warm on her face, lighting her bedroom even through the white lace curtains, and she could hear the birds singing.

She sat up, groggy and confused. The remembered pains of old battles made her flinch. Was she dead, after all? What had happened to her? Were the others dead because of her momentary weakness?

She lay back, drawing the covers up to her chin. A spark of sharp pain twisted through her stomach for an instant, reminding her of the blades. He had killed her, and she was still in Freddy Krueger's territory-- the Dreamscape.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Standing up, she made the bed out of sheer habit, pulling the comforter straight and tucking the corners just so whilst she thought quickly of what to do. She remembered Kristen saying something to her about 'a beautiful dream'. Was she now in some safe place?

She recalled Freddy's terrifying power to control the dream-environment around him; her mouth quirked into a grim smile as she wondered if she could now have that ability as well.

_'You each have a power-- abilities that you've had in your most wonderful dreams."_ She had said that to a group of frightened teenagers who had felt at the time that they had no ability at all to stop Freddy from preying on them. She had known how slim their chances were; she had known how limited their options were. Fight or die.

Nancy stopped fussing with the bed, and picked up a half-empty glass of water from her bedside table.

"Half-empty.. or half-full," she said softly. "Depends on the perspective..." Staring at the glass, she turned it between her fingers. "How about full, Nancy? Let's see if you can manage that."

The level of water did not budge upwards one centimeter. Disappointed, Nancy set it back down and went over to the window, pulling the curtains aside. Bright sunlight streamed into the bedroom, and it was so intense that Nancy flinched back and shaded her eyes for a moment.

When she lowered her hands and looked out at the Dreamscape's version of Springwood, she was amazed.

What a beautiful day! The sky was a perfect shade of light blue, dotted with puffy white clouds that reminded her of fresh cotton candy. The trees and lawns were green and healthy. The birdsong sounded louder and sweeter than it had ever had before. It was an impossibly idealized Elm Street that had never actually existed in reality-- only in her imagination.

She realized this even as her heart soared as she heard her parents' voices, coming from the downstairs. For a moment, her fantasy hung on a slender thread of spun glass, ready to fall and shatter-- were the voices raised in anger or in argument, as they so often had been before her parents had separated?

No, she realized. They were laughing together, as they had not done in so many years. They were happy together.

That was all she had ever wanted, really.

Tears of gladness and gratitude blurred Nancy's vision, and she turned away from the window.

Then she heard a scraping sound coming from the outside.

Nancy turned, heart leaping to her throat, stomach sour with fear and a growing, desperate rage. _'Maybe it's just Glen,'_ she thought. _'Just Glen, climbing Mom's terrace again-- not Freddy. He's dead. We killed him. They had to have killed him!'_

'But maybe he can't die,'a new thought chattered shrilly at her. _'Did you ever consider that possibility, Nancy?'_

She tasted bile at the back of her mouth as a pale hand reached up and grasped the windowsill's edge. White-knuckled with strain, smeared with blood from small cuts and scrapes, it hung on by its fingertips for one straining second longer, then the intruder's other hand reached up and came through the window.

Nancy backed away very quickly. The bile-taste was strong in her mouth, and it was not just at the back of her throat now.

The glass did not break as Freddy Krueger slithered through it-- it merely parted around his body, all the while rippling like water, then it flexed back into the windowpane again. He got to his feet and straightened up, wincing as if in lingering pain, then looked about. Pale blue eyes focused on Nancy, and his thin lips drew back from his teeth as he recognized the bedroom.

Nancy stared for a moment-- at first glance, this skinny teenage boy looked nothing like the scarred monster she knew from her dreams. His hair was blond and tousled. His clothes were completely white, and bore a disturbing resemblance to that worn by the teenage patients at Westin Hills.

Yet it _was_ Freddy-- an unscarred, youthful version, but still him.Images flashed into Nancy's mind: the killer with filthy clothes and skin that looked like melted wax crudely molded over raw, exposed musculature; the hideous Freddy-snake with it's slimy, stretching mouth and huge hateful eyes. These images superimposed their ugliness over the young man's face.

He had recognized her when he was in the form of the great snake, and that one word he had said-- _"You!"_-- had succinctly expressed the wealth of hatred he felt towards her. Now, Nancy knew how deep such feelings of utter enmity could go; she felt them herself.

"You," she whispered, and lunged for him. He barely had time to open his mouth, and certainly had no time to speak-- her right fist slammed into his jaw.

Hands going to his mouth, Krueger staggered back, leaning against the windowsill for support. The look of surprised pain at the assault was already becoming one of pure fury at her appearance on _his_ Elm Street. His gaze left hers for a second as he took his hand away from his lips and examined the blood smeared on it. It was red, just like a normal person's, and this caused him to actually blink. Muttering, "Shouldn't be like that," he looked again to Nancy, as if planning on wringing an explanation from her just before he finished her off.

Nancy paused uncomfortably. Her knuckles had split on his teeth; she squeezed her fist tight and felt sticky blood drip to the carpeted floor. Her brain raced through scenarios for attack-- she wanted desperately to continue, to pound him to a pulp with her bare fists and rip him to shreds, to cause him as much pain as he'd brought to her life and to her friend's lives-- innocent people who'd never harmed anyone, not like Krueger had--

His voice-- that of a teenage boy, not the deep, rasping snarl that she knew from her dreams-- broke into her thoughts.

"Didn't think I'd find you here," he said, "but I came looking around, just in case." His split lips trembled and twitched with fury, oozing blood and revealing yellowed teeth framed in red-streaked spit-- Freddy's familiar, hideously rotten teeth. "How'd you get here? That other girl, the blonde bitch... was it her?" As he spoke, she saw the dripping blood flow back up into his nostrils and mouth. The split on his lip healed itself in a second. He licked his lips, snarling.

"You don't need to know."

He tilted his head, eyeing her like a vulture. "Oh, don't I? When I find whoever pulled this over on me, I'll gut them. You should be with me, Nancy--" he caressed his chest with his left hand, leering-- "not fighting. You're pathetic-- you think you've actually got a chance against me. Just remember: this is still my street, Nancy; _mine_, not yours." The fingers of his right hand twitched convulsively, hooking into the shapes of claws. . .

She looked hard at his right hand, then. "Where's your blades, Freddy?" she asked coldly.

He raised his right hand then, staring at it, and scowled. He glanced back at Nancy, flexing his fingers as if that would bring his favorite weapon back to him, as though he expected the filthy leather glove with its battered armor plating to suddenly sprout from his bare skin. Perhaps that was possible-- Nancy's guess was that it probably was-- but nothing happened. Panic replaced the anger in his eyes.

Nancy grinned, breathing hard with triumph. "I think you're _screwed_, Krueger. It's gone. So's a good portion of your power, I'd bet--"

_"What. Did. You. Do. With. It!"_

"I didn't do anything with the glove."

Spit glistened at the corners of his mouth. "Lying little bitch--"

"I didn't do anything with it, Krueger!" Her own voice had risen to a shout, and now Nancy thought that she could hear her mother and father calling for her. She gritted her teeth. "Think, Krueger, think about what happened. Then you'll know."

He made a growling sound, his hands pressing against his forehead, trembling slightly with the sheer force of his rage. "You did this to me. You and your friends--"

"Damn right. We had to kill you. It was you or us." She braced herself for Freddy's attack, but none came.

There was a long silence. Then, Nancy asked, "Why did you do all of this?"

He lowered his hands and looked up at her, eyes squinting and lip curling. His face was milk-white, save for unpleasant-looking blotches of reddish-pink on his cheeks. "Do what?" His tone was sullen and contemptuous; his eyes did not leave her own for a single moment.

"Try to kill all of us-- all of the Elm Street children. What did we ever do to you? Why were you murdering them all those years ago-- before the fire?"

He said nothing, but instead continued to try to intimidate her with his implacable stare. She looked right back at him, her own anger raging and growing hotter by the moment. "Tell me-- right now," she said through clenched teeth.

He hissed, teeth grinding, lips stretched in a snarl all the way back to his gums. "You think you really want to know, bitch?" There was a strained, hoarse quality to his voice, as though he was in pain.

"Tell me!"

He snarled, then spat out, "Because. Because I could, and because I fucking well wanted to. That good enough for you? It'd better be."

"No."

He rose up to his full height and the look in his pale eyes was more venomous than ever. "Your fucking parents. Your friends' parents. Little brats, all of them!" He seemed to be staring at some distant point that was beyond his immediate surroundings. "Little spoiled brats, little happy brats, with their mommies and their daddies. . . They had nice homes and everything they could ever want, to go back to after school! Not like what I had-- and they all laughed at me for it, oh yes. Shoved me around, sometimes-- your dad and his buddies did that!" His eyes met hers again. "And I caught hell for all my bloody noses and black eyes, when I got back 'home'. No one there to wipe my nose for me and tell me everything was okay." He gave a raw, bitter laugh. _"'Freak! 'Weakling!' 'Bastard son of a hundred maniacs!'_ They liked calling me names--" he grinned suddenly, revealed his stained teeth-- "and I liked imagining what I'd do to them someday. Someday-- they'd all remember me, then. Remember my name-- and they'd wish they'd never _heard_ of Fred Charles Krueger. I'd fucking _make_ them wish it."

Nancy stared at the boy-Freddy for a long moment, silent. An image came to her mind of a lonely, maligned child: sitting alone, playing alone, always alone; destitute of any support or comfort save for his bitter hate for his tormentors and his lurid plans for vengeance.

She blinked, and the horrible image was gone.

At last she said softly, "That doesn't justify what you did."

"It justifies_ everything_."

She remembered her words from her first confrontation with him: _"You're nothing. You're shit."_ It saddened her to think that her own parents had aided in the creation of such a twisted monster, but she reminded herself that Freddy had made his own choices... just as she had made hers.

She searched for more words to say, and found nothing much that was appropriate. What could she say, faced with such hatred, such anger?

He was studying her face very carefully now, his eyes glittering predatorily. When he spoke again, his tone was shrill, dripping with sarcasm. "Ooh, feeling sorry, aren't we?" Cackling laughter, like a hyena's. "Feeling pity for poor abused Freddy Krueger? You're _easy_, Nancy!"

Quicker than she could blink, he was on her, knocking her to the floor, with his hands at her throat. His breath was in her face, reeking of rotten teeth, flesh roasting in a gasoline-fueled fire, blood on rusted iron, and the dirt of a re-opened grave. His youthful face was merely a mask-- the real corruption was within him.

He laughed, and she could now clearly hear the echoes of his more familiar guise in it. Black splotches began to speckle over her vision as his hands squeezed her windpipe. "Too easy," he whispered hoarsely in her ear-- she could barely hear him over the roaring noise of the blood pounding in her ears. "You will _never_ master the Dreamscape." Narrow rivulets of spit ran from his open mouth, spattering onto her face. "You don't have the connections I do. I know a man who lives in the Bad Downtown-- his eyes burn like fire. Thanatos. Lord of death; the seller of souls." He smiled slowly, hideously. "My boss. And when I bring your soul to him, you'll _wish_ that you were just dealing with me."

Nancy thought that she could hear her parents calling for her, and she wondering if when Krueger was done with her he'd kill them as well. Her field of vision was very dark, almost completely black, but in her mind's eye she saw a woman's skeleton, charred black, sinking through the bed as though someone was dragging it down into another realm-- it was her own mother. . .

She heard footsteps on the stairs.

Nancy tried to say something, but the murderer's hands were still on her throat. Their grip relaxed slightly as Freddy reared up, head turning, eyes fixed on the door. His voice sounded soft and far away-- "Is that your father? Good. Let him see this, and then I'll deal with him." He grinned languidly, his pale blue eyes bright and insane.

Several things happened all at once: the door to Nancy's bedroom suddenly burst open, with her father standing in the doorway; Nancy, feeling Freddy's grip relax just enough for her to breath a little, gulped in a deep breath-- and lunged up, towards her attacker's chest; and the bedroom window suddenly gaped wide open, its glass panes rippling like water as it stretched like a hungry mouth-- stretching open towards Krueger's feet.

Freddy turned frantically, first to the window, then back to her, eyes wide with shock, alarmed by the steadily widening window and unaware that Nancy still had so much life left in her. His grip on her neck slipped. Nancy wrenched free, staring at the window, which was forcing its wall to buckle back against the ceiling. The carpet had become as gluey as pancake dough; it sloshed back against Nancy's bed as the window stretched wider and wider. Freddy was backing away as far as he could, all the while staring wide-eyed, as obviously clueless about what was happening as Nancy herself. But as he tried to move, his feet began to slide precariously on the miry carpet; cursing, he skidded close to the edge, floundering and clawing.

Nancy saw her chance. Coughing hoarsely, her throat bitter with blood, she lunged at him, sliding in the carpet before she grabbed him by his white overcoat and pushed him as hard as she could towards the open window. _"Get-- OUT!"_

He twisted around in her grip, howling threats, eyes blazing. He reached for her arm with his right hand-- and as he straightened his fingers she saw ghostly images of the blades springing from their tips. For a second she saw the dark shadow of cracked leather and bronze plates covering the back of his hand, saw the freshly sharpened blades flash brilliantly in the light as they became more solid. . .

She let go of his coat at the last minute, just as he tumbled over the window's edge, straight through the rippling panes of glass. The sunlight reflected wildly off four razor blades for a moment-- then the light, and the blades, were gone.

A moment of silence passed, then with a squeal of warping wood and a shiver of glass, the window contracted back to its normal dimensions. The wall and floor quivered as the carpet solidified.

She stood up and walked shakily over to the windowsill. Looking down at the impossibly lush, green lawn, she saw a smoking crater where Freddy must have fallen. It tunneled deep into the earth.

Nancy shuddered and turned away. She knew Freddy was down there, waiting-- or perhaps fleeing to some safe place, to recover his strength and powers, and bide his time. . .

"Nancy!" Her father's voice. She turned and saw him standing in the doorway. She stared blankly at him for a minute or so, wondering why he hadn't helped her. Perhaps some power in the Dream-realm had blocked him from coming to his daughter's aid; perhaps this battle between Freddy and her would have to be one that she ultimately fought alone, with whatever powers she could use. She looked darkly at the window again, still wondering what had caused it to stretch open to swallow Freddy. She hadn't done it, though she had been desperate enough to wish that something incredible would happen. Perhaps it was all some after-effect of Kristen's gift. . .

She felt her father's hands on her shoulders, holding her up. Nancy hadn't realized how tired she was. "Nancy? Princess, are you all right?"

_'He sounds concerned for me,'_ she thought. He hadn't acted concerned for her in years, when they had been back in the real world.

He gathered her up in his arms, just as he had done when she had been little, after she had had nightmares of monsters and ghosts. Nancy pressed her face against his shoulder, her face ashen, her skin prickling with cold goosebumps, trembling so hard that she thought she'd never be able to stop.

"I thought that he'd killed you, Daddy. I thought you were gone. . ." Tears she hadn't shed for several long years came to her eyes, and she could not speak.

He looked at her. "He did. Did he hurt you?"

She pulled away, looking up at him. "He looked like you. He... stabbed me, and I came here. And now he knows that I'm here, too." She began to cry, feeling truly like a child as he held her tightly and stroked her hair. She had failed, and Krueger had won, and she would never have a life of her own apart from him.

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Across the traintracks from Elm Street, in the Dreamrealm's version of Springwood, a long-deserted highway's pothole-riddled pavement heaved upwards, splitting wide open with a groan of crumbling blacktop. Freddy stuck his hands out of the hole he had created, pulling himself up and out to the surface.

The smoking fissure in the earth closed behind him.

He stood up, looking about with a jaundiced gaze. The Bad Downtown was every bit as bad as he remembered it to be, and in truth he liked it that way. Hell of a job Thanatos had done, in dreaming and shaping the place. . .

But now even this well-known and well-worn environment seemed suddenly threatening to Freddy Krueger.

He shrugged uneasily and started walking.

The Bad Downtown lived up to its name-- Thanatos hadn't hesitated to fill the alleyways with filth and litter the sidewalks with trash. Deformed creatures scuttled about in the darkest shadows, carrying off bits of stuff and chattering to themselves in a language that was unintelligible to all but themselves. The windows of all the buildings were cracked and fly-specked. The buildings themselves looked as though they were about to fall down.

Thanatos' private residence was a several-story, quasi-industrial warehouse that looked several decades too old. It was the most decrepit and ugly building of the whole lot, and in a world of eyesores, it took a great deal to get noticed. Wind whistled through the broken windows; few had any panes of glass left in them, and the ones that did were uniformly cracked and shattered, beer-brown with grime and smeared with black, crusty filth on their jagged edges. Obscene slogans in eye-searing colors had been sprayed over every inch of the warehouse that was not already encrusted with dirt and mold.

Yep-- it was Thanos' sort of place. In all the years Freddy had been in the demon lord's employ, the Bad Downtown had only gotten more and more grotesque.

A cold, sharp wind blew down the street, howling like an angry child, tossing bits of trash on down the street. Freddy shuddered, partly from the cold and partly from long-suppressed fear. The only being who made him afraid was Thanatos; the demon wasn't know for his compassion towards employees who made mistakes.

Then, a man's voice spoke, smooth and deep. It did not seem to come from any particular direction or source; instead, it emanated from every alleyway, every window of every building.

"Come inside. Immediately." A pause. "Or perhaps, little slave, you think that I know not where you are." The voice's tone darkened. "I always know, Krueger."

"Wasn't my fault, Thanatos," Krueger said into the wind, which blew against him even more sharply. "It was-- a little setback." The fingers of his right hand flexed and curled. "Just a little one. I did kill most of them, y'know--"

"And then you let their souls escape," Thanatos hissed. "I do not call that success. Come inside."

Echoes of Thanatos' voice floated around him like ghosts: "Come inside, come inside, come inside. . ." The wind howled again, as if to attempting to drown the echoes out.

He walked over the 'door' of the chain-link fence that surrounded Thanatos' warehouse-- an insurmountable pile of all kinds of filth. Freddy eyed it sourly, waiting, then in the blink of an eye, the trash pile disappeared completely, revealing a jagged gap in the rusting fence. Thanatos had let him in.

Freddy looked about the place as he stepped inside. Pieces of scrap metal and rotten trash lay about, making walking to the warehouse's doorway a tedious, irritating chore.

As he stumbled to the door, a dog skeleton that lay half-buried amid the garbage suddenly sprang to life. Candy wrappers and rotting banana peels fell from its smooth white bones as it lunged for Freddy, its fleshless jaws snapping wildly.

Freddy side-stepped the possessed skeleton, kicking it savagely on the snout. It shuddered to a stop, then, with a whimper, it fell apart into a pile of dry, lifeless bones.

He sneered. "Very funny joke, boss."

A quiet, malicious laugh answered him.

Scowling, Freddy Krueger made for the door of the warehouse, overdue already for a 'consultation' with Lord Thanatos.

THE END.


End file.
